The Inspector Lynley Mysteries

I have really enjoyed this series. I have not read any of the books so I cannot comment on how true it is to them and really do not care. As a stand alone series I love all of the characters and I especially think Nathaniel Parker is a beautiful man and he and Sharon Small have an excellent chemistry. It is a dark show and the characters are neither perfect nor brilliant and they solve crime the old fashioned way. In other words, it is very non-Hollywood. I don't know how indicative they are of how crimes are investigated in Britain but I assure you CSI isn't even remotely close to how things are done in the US. I also like that the characters are not in their 20's and are mature, seasoned people. This is the only series that I have actually purchased. I cannot praise this show enough. I did not give it 10 stars simply because I know it isn't perfect.

The BBC Series is based on novels by Elizabeth George and original scripts. The stories are about two seemingly mismatched London detectives. He is the polished DI Thomas Lynley the eight Earl of Asherton, and his parter is Barbara Havers a sloppy, working class DS. His colleagues think he is a rich, spoiled, golden boy who is a detective as a hobby. She is thought to be difficult and unmanageable. Both have troubled home lives and both are overly dedicated to their jobs. They bicker and they fight, but all while a real respect grows.

I really great series that has yet to get the respect it deserves from the BBC. It is fun to watch this partnership that was thrust upon them by their bosses (with the hopes of getting rid of both of them),click right from the beginning. If you watch it from the pilot "A Great Deliverance" to through to the most recent series, you can see the partners' relationship really develop nicely. In many ways they are more alike them different. Both use the job to avoid the problems in their personal lives. Some even argue that the actor have brought romantic chemistry to the TV show that is not in the books.

Really worth seeing.

I like the stories and the contradiction in characters with Lynley and Havers. It would happen and it gives a broad view of the crimes and their details rather than having two people from the same background. They have their problems but work together well in solving the mysteries. Sharon Small is a favorite of mine anyway but I like Nathaniel a lot too. I recognize the Jensen Interceptor in the first lot but what is the red car he drives later on. The "Helen" character is a dead loss and superfluous in the extreme. She gets In the way and contributes zilch. I like the series a lot, the stories are complex and different. A few of the episodes are exceptional.

I've just finished watching the whole series over a period of a month or so. This series is hard to rate, due to inconsistency -- not the actors' fault - the writing for these series is distinctly weird. It starts off as a pretty good series, then sometime around the middle or end of S2 it becomes distinctly bad, then for s3 and maybe early s4, almost too bad to watch, then it gets tolerably good again.

I didn't mind the replacement of Helen, in fact I thought the last Helen was the best of the lot. If she had been Helen all along, the series would have been better IMHO.

I haven't read the books and, given the horrible clichéd writing of many of the episodes that were based on the books, I am disinclined to.

My review is based Season 1 - 4.

We really enjoyed the first two seasons, Season 3 Lynley became increasingly annoying and by Season 4 he was completely unlikable. Even though the character had a privileged upbringing he wasn't an arrogant so-and-so the first season but was by the end of the 4th.

The character was painfully rude to colleagues, especially Barbara. She had to take the brunt of his sulking and arrogant behavior all the while doing the real police work. I don't expect the main character to be without flaws but I do want to root for them, I stopped caring about him mid-way through the series. Too bad the show wasn't The Inspector Havers Mysteries, she was marvelous.